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Friday, June 05, 2009

When I want an idea of what is happening in the world, I always look at the underbrush. It’s natural to look at political and economic trends. The state of religion also gives a good indication of where any culture may be headed. When the political leaders are nothing more than soulless whores, rubberstamping corporate policies and when the economy reflects the wholesale theft of the people’s industry by a handful of international thieves, you can bet there’s trouble on the way. When religion becomes a travesty upon the teachings of the founders in tandem with the aforementioned, you’re looking at a dangerous highway into darkness but... when the culture has turned into gum from a hot sidewalk on the bottom of your shoes, then there is no telling just how bad it might want to get. It’s not accidental. The key to understanding what is happening is to recognize that it is not accidental.

Enter Twitter. It’s hard to read about anything these days without some mention that some Twit has had something to say about it on Twitter. This is one more example of the general public looking at something but not into it. What does this site do? It gives you something like 144 characters to make a comment. Can’t you do this already anywhere you want to say something? Does this Twitter provide any other service or any service whatsoever that would make it useful or necessary in relation to anything that is already out there? No. All of a sudden though... right out of the blue... there is this interface for disposable and witless banality that is now lit up like Broadway on a Saturday night.

I went there exactly one time to see the interface. What it is, is internet text messaging. It’s a virtual cell-phone. What’s more interesting is what people are saying about it (see the following comments). When you’ve got something that’s composed of high fructose, spun through forced hot air turbines into wall board insulation, you’ve got Twitter. I’ve seen one functioning value which Twitter provides. Twitter allows you to determine the useful value of any person in your life simply by discovering whether they use it or not.

The hype is mind boggling. However, if you look at the undergrowth of real human opinion you find something very different from the left-handed skyhooks and ubiquitous hoopla... something very different indeed. Type in Twitter is in Google and look at the drop down menu. People are not as stupid as we are led to believe. Our being led to believe that people are increasingly more stupid than we ever imagined is a calculated presentation that can only have something truly dark and dangerous in mind. It’s an automatic jump from Twitter to Twits.

I have never seen anything like the Twitter epidemic. Look at how many times it now appears in any article in the MSM. It generates no real income yet it is benefiting from free publicity like no other item of the type has ever received before. There’s more to what’s going on here than what meets the eye. Given that there is nothing going on with Twitter at all makes it very, very strange.

These days, when I drive through towns it is impossible not to note a particular phenomenon. At any hour of the day, on any street where I may be driving, every pre-teen and teenage girl is tapping away on a cellphone; teenage boys as well but less often. The amount of people at all ages who are using cellphones at any time... in their cars, on the street, no doubt on the toilet as well is pandemic. And what were they doing before they were doing this? I especially like it when they are vigorously bouncing their crossed leg over the one below while so engaged.

It’s all in the underbrush. You can see the industrial green shoots of coming permutations pushing up through the cultural Kudzu. You have only to look but people do not look. The important thing is not what people are doing but what they are not doing. With each year the degree of superficial interest in transitory, pop trivia increases. Everything is five miles wide and one inch deep. What is the point?

The point is the direction in which life is being herded. Everything is instant and artificial. It’s processed foods, soda pop and designer coffee. It’s the highly destructive ingredients that go into them. It’s the people who laugh at you when you mention it. It’s the political trends where you don’t have to do anything; all you have to do is say something. Saying is the new doing. Foreign aid and rebuilding of nations destroyed under false pretenses has nothing to do with aid or rebuilding. The money is given for the purpose of being paid out to corporations to the tune of 86% of the outlay. The products and services given are then inflated in costs to several times of any actual cost.

We have come to the point where lies are the substance of life. We have come to the point where the lives of others are nothing more than casualties in a video game. We have come to the point where there is no point and Twitter is going to let you know just how true that it. We’ve come to the point where people believe life on Earth began 6000 years ago and they are doing museum tours to imprint this ugly fantasy into the minds of their children.

Think about this... look what has happened to every element of the culture in the last few decades and imagine... imagine where it’s headed. Keep in mind what occurred around Katrina. Keep in mind the now irrefutable truth about the recent wars, strong-armed through Congress by Zionist catamites. Keep in mind the recent scandals in the United Kingdom concerning their Parliamentarians and the theft of public funds. Keep in mind the new expansions of conflicts by a president elected to end them. Keep in mind the destruction of the educational system and the plague of political correctness running through every level of it. Then there’s Twitter. It’s everywhere. It’s got an unbelievable engine of ‘in your face’ name recognition embedded in nearly everything you read in the main stream.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into what I’m trying to get the reader to recognize because I believe the reader knows what I’m talking about. The most curious thing is that many, many people recognize what I myself can see. The CNN poll of a few years ago showed that over 80% of the American people believed there was something wrong with the official version of 9/11. Observe the behavior of Zio-Joe Biden when confronted about it a couple of days ago. Look at the looting of the American public for the benefit of the very people who caused the financial crisis.

We know one thing and the press tells us another. We want one thing and the politicians give us another. We want health and well being and the corporations give us deadly products to ruin our health for the prosperity of the AMA-Pharmaceutical combine. I found out the other day that major health insurers have billions invested in the tobacco industry.

Forget the religious angle concerning the implications of the present state of existence. The meaning of these things can be intuited though objective reasoning. You can take hard math and calculate where this is going to end up.

What was once important is no longer important. What is completely unimportant is now critically important. Twitter isn’t an accidental name. Consider the meaning of ‘twittering away” in its various possibilities of meaning.

I haven’t said what I wanted to say because, after all, we’re talking about Twitter. Life is now a soundbyte. The good news, I guess, is that when life as we knows it, encounters its certain destruction... it won’t mean anything. A giant pig is going to appear in the sky, silhouetted in a Warner Brothers logo and the last thing you’re going to hear is “Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-That's all folks!” That last sentence is just about exactly at the limit of a Twitter entry.

44
comments:

Anonymous
said...

When I was a child I used to observe the things that went on around me and think, " This can't really be happenening. It must be a bad dream." Driving down the street these days, through the maze of billboards,where in spite of the rising price of fuel, not to mention rising sea levels, every other vehicle is a gas guzzling monstrosity of an SUV or 2 ton pick-up, I feel the same way again. On the rare occasions when I turn on th TV, the sense of unreality almost overwhelms me. The tanking economy is nothing more than a marketing angle for American advertisers. Ditto environmental changes-We now have"green auto insurance" and "green HD plasma TV's". And I think "This can't possibley be real.I know I'll wake up back at home soon." God have mercy on us when the alarm goes off.

The people know, at least sub-consciously that things are not right, but there is no conscious model that is able to integrate and resolve the many confusing signals that regular folk deal with. Collectively, our job is to create a new system for understanding that provides better integration prospects between authentic and projected expressions of self.

The more banal common culture becomes the more people look for ‘transitional objects’. This maintains the consumers and the trance, but in the long run the impulse to make something of ‘being human’, is bound to provide the inspiration to finally break this trance.

Twitter is the next logical progression for a society that has completely forgotten how to interact with each other in any meaningful way. It used to be you had to don a disguise or just act out behind the wheel to be somewhat anonymous while proving your point or getting something off your chest, but the internet changed all that. Think about it - theses "social networks" allow 2 things that many people seem to value a great deal; the option of defining and describing ourselves in any way they see fit without scrutiny(lying and/or misrepresenting to others), and the ability to endlessly engage in virtual discussions about the self we imagine to exist within these frameworks. Sure, you can update your profile to show that you have now left the coffee shop and are proceeding to the mall, but does anyone really give a rat's ass? Someone must think so or why do these vehicles keep popping up? Stalkers and predators must LOVE this stuff.

It all creates a very difficult situation for the parents of teens and pre-teens, or at least it does in my home. Telling my kids that they do NOT in fact NEED a cell-phone or computer in their room is easy. Getting them to see the logic behind the statement is much harder. There is something behind this push beyond kids being a powerful spending force. It is sad and frustrating to see young people completely absorbed in all this crap, but I suppose every generation has its own dangers to be sussed out and confronted.

Well said, V. I'll Tweet later about my trip to the hardware store and then about the haircut I'm gonna get after that. I know y'all are DYING to keep up on what I'm doing at all times, right?

The senses, the mind and the intelligence are the sitting places of this lust. Through them lust covers the real knowledge of the living entity and bewilders him.

PURPORT

The enemy has captured different strategic positions in the body of the conditioned soul, and therefore Lord Kṛṣṇa is giving hints of those places, so that one who wants to conquer the enemy may know where he can be found. Mind is the center of all the activities of the senses, and thus when we hear about sense objects the mind generally becomes a reservoir of all ideas of sense gratification; and, as a result, the mind and the senses become the repositories of lust. Next, the intelligence department becomes the capital of such lustful propensities. Intelligence is the immediate next-door neighbor of the spirit soul. Lusty intelligence influences the spirit soul to acquire the false ego and identify itself with matter, and thus with the mind and senses. The spirit soul becomes addicted to enjoying the material senses and mistakes this as true happiness. This false identification of the spirit soul is very nicely explained in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (10.84.13):

Twitter. Baffling. I am continually asked about facebook, and myspace or why my old cell phone won't except text messages. Shit, I haven't had/watched TV in over 8 years, except to watch dvd's once a week on movie day. And twitter, and texting in general, seem to be a step back. Wasn't video conferencing the next big thing? Instant live audio/video contact 24/7 ? Look, I'm a fackin' celebrity, I'm SO fackin' important, everyone I know is trying to get in touch with me all the time.

Hi Les, thanks for the article. This "twitter" crap is for the birds. I can't believe how so many people dread having time, quiet, silence, periods for oneself to spend in isolation. They HAVE to be doing SOMETHING.It appears an adolescent mentality. Arrested development, juvenile. As a person who got rear-ended on the freeway by some little queenie on a cell phone, I have little sympathy and less interest with that type of behavior. Good for you, bringing these things to folk's attention.

Les,Ill try and not twitter here, but words without feelings and though behind them are just twitters. The soundbyte world is not the end of this bad loop of events, but a planned one. Planned not for outcomes but current actions. The goal is to keep people in fear and lust. We see this well with another Gita quote above. The less you spend on thinking the more others can form ideas for you. If those idea are based on sex and owning objects, well there is a store for you, now and as long as you want to move with this fear. The system isnt looking to it own end, why would it, it just wants what it can get out of people rightnow. Twittering only helps train the brain to work for a few seconds, just about as long as it takes to buy something? Other issue today, the seeming large group of people wakening to this nightmare. We should find strenght in this, but remember its our own viewing and acting that matter and nothing else. Its far to hard to figure out all the reasons for someones else's action? Better to understand our own first. This way, even if you're wrong about others, you will still be growing and showing something better for the world's sake. Even more so, the views share in public today or lies and as far from the truth as I can stand, as you point out well, Les. Very hard is it to fish out anything meaningful in the press or education system. No need to even look that way, the pig will be sitting on this system and its time has past already. What I see, is people's unwillingness to go with this new flow? Twittering lets them do something else in realtime to forget and calm this wave?

Well said. My sentiments exactly. I was cycling through the local university a couple days ago and noticed that dang near all the students out and about were talking on cell phones. Doesn't anyone have face-to-face conversations anymore? About 50 years ago or so, Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message." Guess he was right.

Personally, I believe the Pope and the queen of england and their black nobility and the masons and all other bought-off minions push all these lies and banalities to further seal everyone's coming enslavement. Just my two cents, keep up the great writing - you definitely have a talent in getting your message across.

This is sooo true, very deep and clear this statement is. If we cant even talk face to face, what are we sharing and creating? All things start from within, and its not soo eazy to share that light of creation over the phone or via emails. I say Les does a wonderful job getting around this, but even more affective would any of our hopes and goals be if shared in realtime with real souls. I like talking to people, I love looking into their eyes. We all have the love and power of oneness and can show it too. We are the source and the power of light and love, the medium. The message is the key, so I smile.

First time I have seen a serious blog entry on this subject. I see a lot of firsts at your blogs. I am something of a psychic. I won't go into this but I get called in professionally for this type of thing. When I scan you I see consistent increases of power and pervasiveness. I know this doesn't mean much coming from a voice off the internet but it is what I get.

I saw some of Conan O'Brien's "In the Year 3000" bit on the Tonight Show the other night, where he predicted that YouTube, Twitter, and Face Book will one day merge and be called "You Twit Face". I laughed my ass off, how appropriate.James aka jackruby64

Sounds like your living well!!! I just had to share this. I have lost out on two relationships in the last year because I dont do the whole texting thing. I said to those young ladies, I cant hide behind words. Two, I cant spell or write well to begain with. If you really want to get to know me, texting isnt the right route? Well, I dont think either understood me point, soundbytes dont work for real ideas anyway. I guess the point here is, twittering is a replacement for real action. It feeds the ego and thats it. It can only help people live in a world of the personna. The very last level of self is great to share but where's the beef? What else will you share? Most people are far to scared to talk about their unseen self, for many reasons. But this must happen to be in true balance with others and the material world?

Yes imagine where it's all headed!It's already so crazy I spend most of the time cultivating the veg garden.Re: the 6000yo world. Someone sent methe DVD "Jesus Camp" which I got around to watching last weekend. That'll blow your mind off (the 'religious' child abuse). Even Teddy Haggard has a cameo deriding homosexuality. Great essay, even if the implications are as depressing as what Obomber had to say at Buchenwald today.

Pig Burt and me are thinking about starting up a IMON service called YELLA! where the only rules are annonymity & acrimony, sweet huh?

It gets better:

Brilliant exposure of some bone-dry undergrowth

No beating about the bush; a salvo of searing words and - whoomph - Tweeter bytes the ash

IM MMS SMS instant mirroring is deaf a mute point to put it bluntly cos all peeps are hooked peeping with all the udder peepersit's like monkeys with virtual grooming machines, nitpicking,tickling, giggling, a quick one while she's away, order more bling, bananas to go

No more slipping away from the talk of the town - you've got to have your Gossipa with you 24-7 or else people are going to start talking about you or looking at you instead of yourtube

I've got enough gear to look like a norm.file but not furlong now our kids will soon be turning us in for not giving them a cell phone(inter-arresting name) like a lot of their peers 7-10 year olds kids that can lecture on the threats of passive smoking - then get driven home to their electrohypnomagnetic rechargers.

Sorry,(not really, just being polite:) I'm a cyclist and a smoker and should just die of shame for having made the world such an unhealthy mess... but I'll have a hard time not laughing myarse to hellf when they expose the health hazards of beaming yakyak beams through you head all yaking day long.

Why and where were you offline yesterday? The chips were down? hmmm, what if we put them in, then?What have you forgoten? To take mem+rem pill - no need - it's in the water now common you remember who your greatgranpa voted in, right? No more grouch potato with TVeyeImplants. Peeyore Happynumnum.

something that’s composed of high fructose, spun through forced hot air turbines into wall board insulation

Wouldn't that be trans-hydrogenated cotton candy sheathed in fiberglass? Something that would take the shape of bright pink candy whips sold in open jars at the Flying J cashier counters. Might be cute in holiday colors for the Xmas stockings, as prized as an aluminum wind-up dwarf rat with glued on fur that plays the cymbals. My late uncle had the most fascinating 78 rpm called Worms Underground, I think it was. The music consisted of grinding noises intermixed with whisperings of "Worms Underground, everybody loves worms, big worms fat worms, everybody loves worms."

"I found out the other day that major health insurers have billions invested in the tobacco industry."Now why would that be, you ask?Well, Les, et.al., you all might want to take a look at a MarketWatch article entitled Modified tobacco plant may block HIV.Other links to the article include a UPI article and Breitbart.com.

When the Daily Mail's "Femail" sidebar contains nothing but the most deliberately vacuous celebrity-obsessed masturbatory fantasies about who has had botox and who's screwing who, it should come as no surprise that the overwhelming mass of western consumers would have trouble finding 144 chars-worth of content in their entire lives.

Give the Deltas and Epsilons their Twitter, their sexting, their MySpace and their other techno-diversions: there is absolutely nothing to be gained by lamenting the decline in mass social discourse.

The sorts of people who used to be able to write properly, still exist. They will exist even after the foundation of 'Yella!' (GREAT idea, btw)... as will people who will insist that they will only say the most important things while looking into their interlocutor's eyes.

The proles (for whom i have a great affection) have only three things that animate their otherwise empty heads: sex, food, and Spectacle. They are never going to be mobilised to change society - if the Chinese invaded the vast majority would react no differently to a dairy herd upon change of ownership of the farm.

What we have to get away form, is the idea that in some dim distant past every Chinese peasant was a philosopher - that's bullshit. If you offered a McMansion and a slot on "Next Top PornStar" to the average peasant from any country, they would leap at the chance.

I say this without contempt (although I realise it SOUNDS contemptuous). I cannot explain to my cat that they could quite easily leave off killing birds and mice, and in the same way it is not possible (and is not our 'job') to lift the minds of the mass-man from its ordinary torpor. It is, unfortunately, an immovable object - one might as well go into the milking shed and exhort the cows to "Rise Up! Throw off your chains and be free!"; they would chew quietly and wonder what on earth was going on.

"Mass movements for change" tend on the whole to be led by a small group of committed people, usually from the educated classes (here I don't mean 'formal' education... simply people who read about things and think about them).

That type of individual is quite rare; they are not inherently more-worthy than the man who watches Nascar and doesn't think of anything past flag and porn... because some of the 'readers' decide that the best use of their knowledge is to try and divert resources towards themselves, by force.

For every ten million people twittering away like retarded obese sparrows, ther might be one or two exchanging encrypted messages on alt.anonymous.messages, getting a difficult job done.

Think of those people as being 'PETA for humanity': we are committed to the eventual overthrow of human-farming.

It's a "brave new world" and we're "amusing ourselves to death". They did an Orwellian Big Brother number on part of the world (the communist regions) and a Huxley number on the rest (the capitalist regions).

This is the first time a message can go around the globe, and influence billions of people at one time. Yes it's possible to do that with various other technologies but this is geared to short succinct messages that are able to call for immediate action, across all borders, to all groups at once.

I'm quite sure Les, that our "glorious leaders", are terrified of the potential that the internet has to educate the masses. Enter the social networking sites. The young folks especially are taken with Bebo, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and other pointless but extremely time consuming wastes of time. These sites I'm sure along with a myriad of Dr Judy Wood type disinfo sites, are part of the "elite" cyber war, designed to mislead and distract. The Judy Wood thing doesn't hook me up, so I have to assume is not as effective as the big guys would like it to be. The Twitteratti sites are a great success, especially with the young folks so expect more of the same. Keep up the good work Les, ,,,ian.

It's all right on cue--Google out of nowhere--Obama out of nowhere, Twitter pulled out of someones ass--Once the machine gets behind something, it's always been there--you just weren't cool enough to see it.All pre-manufactured for your viewing pleasure with totally inter-changeable parts--yet all hollow.

New Age change you can bury your head in--sand optional--please leave your exposed bare ass up in the air--we need more bicycle parking--global warming you know--It's always better when you can say you didn't see it coming--or going--

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind produced by giant fans on a sound stage--truckloads of shit driving up behind said fans--Gallagher at the ready--wooden mallet in hand--poncho not optional

Specials on D-Day for your patriotic pleasure turn into infomercials for THE (insert star of David) holocaust--

The Obama world tour castigating the Palestinian's for using violence and telling the Israeli's they need to be kinder and gentler when bulldozing--perhaps less diesel emissions--

Hi Les-wanted to add-people PAY for this crap!Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, all this crap. And how do they pay for it? Most, by corporate servitude. Who puts this crap out?The same corporations. Isn't corporate servitude fun? Something those who enjoy paying for such things might want to consider

Drug companies of course always have had interest in tobacco, fast food and alcohol operations. These schemes provide the disease industry with a continuous flow of life long customers.

Here is a section from http://www.viewsandpreviews.com/ (health section):

The Windows of Opportunity!

In a little town of just a few hundred families there was a little window glass repairman. Once in a while the glass repairman would get a call to fix a broken window glass pan. Though needed - once in a while - the window repairman was a little poor man.

That was, until the little fairy showed him the way!

The little window repairman recruited some nasty little kids to break the windows under the cover of harsh winds and stormy weather.

The little window repairman then hired some little apprentices as he got very busy.

The little window repairman then just kept on copying his successful formula for window repairs from one little town to the next little town. Soon, the little window repairman had the whole world covered with his window repair operations.

The little window repairman was no more little - He was The Grand Ma.And, the moral of this little story:

GT said: "I say this without contempt (although I realise it SOUNDS contemptuous). I cannot explain to my cat that they could quite easily leave off killing birds and mice, and in the same way it is not possible (and is not our 'job') to lift the minds of the mass-man from its ordinary torpor. It is, unfortunately, an immovable object - one might as well go into the milking shed and exhort the cows to "Rise Up! Throw off your chains and be free!"; they would chew quietly and wonder what on earth was going on."

I can usually tell when something is part of the demon elite's agenda because it gets heavily promoted on Radio One in the UK. This station is propaganda central aimed squarely at the younger population. Currently almost every DJ on there is obsessed, apparently, with twittering. We are meant to believe that people who have the energy and drive to rise to the top in broadcasting are now twittering every five minutes every time they have a shit.

Another propaganda tool they constatly push is the violent war game on Xbox Call of Duty. This extraordinary game is basically training young mostly men in the ways of war, and making them much more aggressive. Very wealthy DJ's like Chris Moyles and Vernon Kay are aparently huge fans of it and plug it constantly. all the Radio one DJ's are also in favour of the war in Afghansitan, and push it in a positive light daily. The news on this sation is often reporting from the front line in Afghansitan, talking to the troops and inviting former and current soldiers to text in with their views on whether the war is good or excellent. War poster boy Ross Kemp is often a guest, in between trips to the lads and his latest stunt, reinforceing the somali pirate nonsense for his boss, rupert murdoch.

Twitter encourages soundbite communication, much like politics today. there is no depth, just bullet point inanity. The filth who run the world and control us do not want to encourage meaningful thought. Google is slowly becoming a programme to tell us how to live our lives, with suggestions as to what we could do that day.

Technolgy does not need to give us human like robots as the elite are turning ever more people into automatons, incapable of independent thought or deed.

Lets combine and breakdown three ideas in these comments; those being dairy herds, swarms and psychopaths. The psychopath bit is from a comment Les made after his, The Madness at the Worlds End essay.

Humans are not Cattle. (Yes, I am a left-brainer.) They are human beings that have not yet learned much about being human. The swarm seems to make their turns based on signals given by psychopaths. Psychopaths are human beings that know nothing about being human and have a primary interest in seeing that the rest of us learn as little as possible about being human. Human beings that do know something about being or becoming Human must recognize their obligation to create and live by a new set of signals.

The manifest expression results from the balance between order and liberty within consciousness.

I love your new turn on things Les, and as always the comments here are excellent.

Taking shelter of insatiable lust and absorbed in the conceit of pride and false prestige, the demoniac, thus illusioned, are always sworn to unclean work, attracted by the impermanent.

PURPORT

The demoniac mentality is described here. The demons have no satiation for their lust. They will go on increasing and increasing their insatiable desires for material enjoyment. Although they are always full of anxieties on account of accepting nonpermanent things, they still continue to engage in such activities out of illusion. They have no knowledge and cannot tell that they are heading the wrong way. Accepting nonpermanent things, such demoniac people create their own God, create their own hymns and chant accordingly. The result is that they become more and more attracted to two things — sex enjoyment and accumulation of material wealth. The word aśuci-vratāḥ, "unclean vows," is very significant in this connection. Such demoniac people are only attracted by wine, women, gambling and meat-eating; those are their aśuci, unclean habits. Induced by pride and false prestige, they create some principles of religion which are not approved by the Vedic injunctions. Although such demoniac people are most abominable in the world, by artificial means the world creates a false honor for them. Although they are gliding toward hell, they consider themselves very much advanced.

Hey Les, I was waiting for someone to mention 'newspeak', Orwell's angle on the means of reduction in mental acuity by way of language. But then, who needs a centrally dictated reduction in language when we can have the whole population teaching themselves to be illiterate?

Look on the bright side- at least it's much easier to be invisible in public nowadays; all you have to do is stare intently at a little plastic box while tapping it with your thumbs (don't forget to use a broken rhythm, which is harder to remember to do than I expected).

Some of the previous comments were fascinating, especially one mentioning two potential relationships that never materialized because of a failure to use text messaging. That was a first (for me anyway). Probably for the best, too.

I once met a camp counselor from one of those 'hoods in the woods' summer camp programs that get troubled teens out in 'nature' (and the euphemism 'troubled' means they've already been and are likely to be future assets of the corporate-prison complex).

The kids came from New York City and Newark, mostly. He told me in all seriousness that a very common problem the staff had to deal with was the fact that most of the kids had never walked on a surface that wasn't flat before. They had to be taught by the staff how to walk uphill without tripping over tree roots and such ("Sit here while I go get the med kit, and lift your foot a little higher next time, ok?"), or that rocks in water with green stuff on them are very slippery. Sometimes they crap in their pants too, but not from fear; their pants were down at the time, it's just that they'd never shat while squatting before and misjudged the drop zone. That usually only happens once.

Oh, and when I say kids I mean between the ages of 12 and 17(!). Some of these kids will be eligible to vote the year after they learned how to walk (in 3-D!) and not shit in their pants. Actually, they would've been eligible to vote had they not already acquired a felony conviction or two. There are a lot of these camps, they run several sessions through the Summer and stay full most of the time. Sigh.

BTW (alluding to a comment): If you liked "Jesus Camp" and "What Would Jesus Buy?" then you absolutely must see the documentary "Marjoe." Poor kid was named after Mary and Joseph, and he was a well-known Bible-thumpin' preacher by the time he was 5. Later, the LSD seemed to do him a lot of good.

What's going to be interesting is seeing what happens when someone hacks Twitter. I hope they're at least creative.

I got suspicious watching the promotion of twitter. C-span was covering a government function, maybe the state of the union, and they were panning the assemblage and commenting on how they were all twittering. I found that odd.

But then when the Iranian revolution, the sequel, was brought to us via twits, I realized what a valuable asset this was. More immediacy than the internets and light years beyond talk radio and Fox.

The comments to your posting are hilarious. I wish I could be similarly amusing, but all I have to add right now is that the new, improved shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, now says that the famous dead protestor, Neda, was one of his daughters. What are the chances? Guess they couldn't reuse the old taking babies out of incubators gambit.